1. Field of the Invention
An embodiment of the present invention relates to an electrode assembly and a secondary battery including the electrode assembly, and more particularly, to a secondary battery in which safety and reliability are improved.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, because secondary batteries may be charged and discharged over multiple cycles of use, the demand for secondary batteries that can be easily adopted for use as power supplies to drive portable electrical apparatus has increased concurrently with the fast development of electrical, electronic, communication, computer industries, and the related fields. Intensive research in various fields has been made in order to improve performance and safety due to the increasing number of applications for the batteries.
Further, the demand for miniaturization and for higher capacity of the secondary batteries has increased. The sizes of the secondary batteries have generally increased in order to increase the capacity of the secondary batteries. Concomitantly, various effort needs to be made to minimize the size of the rechargeable batteries in order to conform to the miniaturization of the portable electrical apparatus. Consequently, competing efforts for miniaturization and greater power capacity may be problematic in terms of safety; when the secondary battery is used as a power supply for an external electronic apparatus, a synergy effect created by the electronic apparatus may cause a higher risk of an impairment in the safety of the battery.